350: The Most Important Number in the World

Details

Series:

Syracuse University Lecture Series

Speaker:

Bill McKibben

Location:

Hendricks Chapel

Date:

Wed, Oct 10, 2012

Time:

7:30 PM

Additional Information

Bill McKibben is one of America’s best known environmentalists. He has written books that
have shaped public perception—and public action—on climate change, alternative energy
and the need for more localized economies. McKibben is the founder of 350.org, a global grassroots climate change initiative that
organized thousands of events in most of the world’s nations on Oct. 24, 2009.

McKibben’s seminal books include “The End of Nature,” widely seen as the first book on
climate change for a general audience, and “Deep Economy,” a bold challenge to move
beyond “growth” as the paramount economic ideal and to pursue prosperity in a more local
direction—an idea that is the cornerstone of much sustainability discourse today. A former
New Yorker staff writer and Guggenheim Fellow, he writes for various magazines, including
Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, National Geographic and The New York Review of Books. In 2007,
McKibben founded stepitup07.org to demand that Congress curb carbon emissions that
would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. On April 14, 2007, as part of the
effort, McKibben helped lead over 1,000 demonstrations, across all 50 states, a watershed
moment described as the largest day of protest against climate change in the nation’s
history.

In this talk, McKibben will describe the science of climate change and talk about the
inspiring global movement that he’s led to help change the world’s understanding of its
peril, and spur the reforms necessary to get the planet back to safety.